


complicated creation

by tasmc



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Other, PTSD, religion but it’s like. fictional., this is just a character study lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 06:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18244145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tasmc/pseuds/tasmc
Summary: a character study for drift.





	complicated creation

He saw himself in Megatron, in the way that they all did. They had all been like him, scared, violent, pushed aside and forced the fight for their lives . No one had ever really choose to be a Decepticon, it was just something that seemed like it had to happen. After a lifetime of being violated by a society it only seemed to make sense to oppose it. It seemed like the only option, and there was never a question of whether is what the right thing to do, because it felt like the only thing . 

Drift had wanted a better cybertron — perhaps the others did too. But whatever purpose any of them had clung to before was gone. Cybertron was dead. If there was once a purpose for the war, it was gone. War was the purpose. The Decepticons fought because it was all they had known, and it felt wrong to be doing anything else. Drift knew the feeling well. Violence was something he had been taught since birth. It was something that followed him like a shadow, always showing the worst parts of him when faced with the brilliant light, and it terrified him. 

Sometimes Drift lay awake in his recharging station at night, unable to shake the feeling of warm energon on his hands. Sometimes he agonized over the images of mutilated dead Decepticons in his mind. Their purple badges blurred in his dreams and sometimes flashed bright red, and visions of friends and enemies merging together to form one indistinguishable mech. He always woke up in a yell, his spark pounding and defense systems preparing to fight a danger that just wasn’t there. He mentioned them to Rodimus once or twice in passing, and was often met with sympathies in the form of “We all have nightmares, Drift,” which was true. But he doubted any Autobot had nightmares quite like these. 

It had been a long time since he had joined the Autobots. He was one of them. They were the closest he’d ever had to a family. But no matter how many laughs or drinks Drift shared with his friends, there was this unmistakable chasm between them. Experiences that he could never have and ones they could never dream of. Things that only a ‘Con would understand. It was often in these moments of joy even, that it was most obvious to him. 

The first time they all traded stories from Cybertron, he experienced what could only be described as culture shock. The Cybertron his fellow Autobots experienced sounded like a fairy tale to him, and they described their former lives he felt like a young mech again, passed out and overcharged on the side of the road and watching mechs with shiny new paint job walk by.

He knew he was equal to his peers , they were all equal under Primus. He just couldn’t help but feel bitter about the unavoidable difference between himself and his fellow Autobots, one that it sometimes felt only he could see. He often thought back to when he had first joined the Autobots, how he had figured killing a Decepticon would be easy, because he was good now, and they were bad. But when he was confronted with it, he remembered freezing up, staring into the mechs optics and seeing himself reflected back.

None of the Decepticons had been his friends, not anywhere close to way the Autobots where to Drift now. But there was a unique camaraderie that came from being a Decepticon, from being trampled by society and made for the same purpose. They were brothers, carved from the same cloth. There were no bonds of love and caring but perhaps something that felt deeper, a purpose that was binding. He was connected to them, to all of them, by ties he could never truly sever. He had come from the gutter. They all had. And nearly every Decepticon he had met was eager to show him no prayers to Primus or fancy swords would change that. 

Sometimes in moments that he kept behind closed doors, he felt overwhelming doubt and anger. How could Primus do this to him? How could a God that loves him set him loose upon his own kin? How could a benevolent being force him to break the vows he forged? Force him to betray the only mechs who could truly understand him? Drifts anxieties filled him with shame. He was appalled at himself for questioning a God who had done nothing but deliver him from the worst of things — but these thoughts always seemed to come back. 

Once again Drift dug to his past, to his time with Wing in the Circle of Light. He recalled with a fond sadness the lessons Wing had tried to teach him. How he had taught Drift that darkness was always easy, and the path of good bore unspeakable pain. Drift had learned — after months of aft kicking, that every good decision required sacrifice. True beauty could only be achieved through excruciating pain. His race could only be delivered to the light through explicable suffering. 

Drift had since resolved that he was an instrument. A tool sent by Primus to unite the two groups. To heal the wound that had long plagued the Cybertronians. Til all are one. Perhaps there was no mech who truly understood him. Isolation was the burden he had to bear. He didn’t need them to understand him, or eachother, but just to listen. To open their audios and sparks to him, to peace, to Primus.


End file.
